I opened my eyes.
But I saw nothing.
I tried to move my hands.
But nothing moved.
I was fixed in place, unable to do anything.
And so I understood—
Why countless intelligent beings trapped inside this Box of the Garden Quota Praisers could use none of their abilities, none of their possessions from life, and instead were helplessly tortured for decades until they died.
I’ve been swallowed.
I couldn’t perform any action.
Right now my body was gripped tight, sealed completely—
For the sake of meditation.
Digestive fluid was secreted.
—Hell, hell, this is hell. How can it hurt this much? I have come to realize the true horror of what “primordial pain” means. Those sentimental lines about repeating your saddest memories, triggering deep trauma—those are lukewarm, overcomplicated comforts for those in safety, people whose bodies are at ease. I envy them. True pain is born of the flesh—pain so severe it unravels the mind.
—The pain of scraping away the membranes and nerves layer by layer with a needle! Pain flooding my entire body! My twisted stomach-skin, wherever my viscera even are, feels like it’s on fire. It’s like being trapped in an endlessly burning hell. Is it opening my mouth and pouring digestive fluid in? No—thankfully I don’t have an esophagus—no, it’s like my esophagus is being burned through—
A sound rang in my head.
The Seeker’s voice, reciting the pain I felt, my torment, my analysis, my begging, my screaming, exactly as they were.
And—
—I-don’t-want-to-die-I-want-to-die-I-don’t-want-to-die-stop! Stop! Stop! Why? How did it come to this? It hurts—it hurts so much! It hurts!! Name-nim, I did something worthwhile—It hurts! I did something worthwhile—Save me—kill me—save me—kill me!
—Breath is choking off. I can’t bear the pain. I know instinctively: there’s no way I can endure this for decades. I think it’s lucky I was the one to enter, but even guessing how long I could keep thinking that chills me—there’s no mental fog, no dulling of the senses. This kind of supernatural disaster...
Two other intelligent voices.
The voices of others being tortured, right beside me, reverberating together—this mutual exhibition of torment was the completion of the “Box-Seated Seeker.”
Like this, we would remain helpless in digestive fluid, joined as parts of the Seeker, enduring decades of agony within the maddening whispers born from each other’s pain.
The digestive fluid served as a kind of preservative, preventing us from dying, keeping our minds clear to feel the pain.
Madness. Terror.
But pain so insane it didn’t even allow escape into madness!
Happy Maker...!
I missed that item, absent from my hands now, with a rabid craving—but I, I...
Endure.
I tried to let smoke rise.
No—turned my whole self into smoke.
Because smoke was my component, I could do it without moving. The smoke filled, tight, the Seeker’s pouch that sealed me in like a womb.
Even in smoke form, the pain didn’t recede; everywhere I touched burned with a death-cry of agony.
But there was one difference.
Smoke is gas.
From inside the smoke, I reconstituted just one part of my body—
My horn.
And I barely shook it.
Jingle.
The bell hanging from my horn rang out clear.
...Ha!
The pain didn’t fade, but my ability to think, my will, returned.
A thing to do.
Something I could do!
I knew there was another human pressed right against this pouch that bound me immobile.
...S-slowly.
For the first time, I was glad I couldn’t find my vocal cords to cry aloud.
This time...
From near the surface of the smoke, I exposed a patch of skin from under my uniform.
My tattoo.
Inventory...!
I tried to shove the very membrane sealing me into the tattoo’s space.
But it didn’t work.
...!
Every attempt only made the pouch tighter, its volume shrinking in proportion to whatever I stored inside. Even in smoke form, my body was overloading.
No go.
And instead—like lubricating oil—only more digestive fluid oozed out!
—Pain! Pain! Even turning to black smoke doesn’t end the pain. If anything, it intensifies.
No physical resistance worked. In the box, the victim was an organ inside the Seeker’s stomach—unable to harm the Seeker in any way!
But I still took every bit of the physical pain. Such an unreasonable, hellish ghost story.
—No, stop, the digestive fluid—this is death—or rather, pain like dying—never in Baekilmong, never even on the Tamna-bound train, have I felt pain like this—
And then—
—Agent Podo?
......
...!
—Impossible. Why? Why is it Agent Podo and not an evildoer? I guessed being pushed was because of resentment toward the Bureau—no, the pain’s too much for the reason to matter. No.
—You’re telling me this person will also be here for decades, feeling this pain?
The Seeker displayed mental pain too.
Agent Cheongdong’s mental pain.
And mine as well.
—I am used to pain, I can endure. I am... used to pain. It’s slightly better because I can take another form. Ringing the bell inside the smoke—no, it hurts! Hurts! No, can’t stand—
In that instant—
—I get it! Thoughts tied to the pain are heard by the other. Pain-linked... pain-linked...
Agent Cheongdong realized it.
And the Seeker’s whispered display of his pain changed—faster, more erratic, as if reflecting his state.
—I am in pain. So if I can partially turn into smoke, if that lets me move even slightly, then I will use the five-colored shoelaces right now to escape this pain.
...!!
—Right now. I can’t stand it anymore. Just tie the shoelaces and walk. Walking alone is enough to fulfill the condition! Hurry!
......
And I remembered again.
Agent Cheongdong can’t leave even if he has shoelaces.
Just like in Lukki Mart, when both his legs were gone and he couldn’t use them, in this sealed state he couldn’t leave.
Only I could get out.
And once I was gone—
The others remaining would stay here, on display, in pain, unable to ever leave.
Along with the new one the box had swallowed in my place.
......
—I can’t hear Agent Podo’s voice. Did they leave? Am I the only one in this pain? Hopeful, but... this pain will end with me hurling curses for having escaped alone—
I turned part of my smoke back into the shape of a hand.
Bared the skin—
And touched it to the membrane.
To the “Box-Seated Seeker.”
Box-Seated Seeker
A power of the Nameless Garden-Praiser Sect appearing in Records of the Dark Seeker.
Rank: 6th Class under the Garden-Praiser Church.
According to the Garden-Praisers’ precepts, they cut off their own legs and, after repeated asceticism and meditation inside a box, attain power and become box-dwelling creatures that secrete digestive fluid.
They are Garden-Praisers who focus on the most primordial form of suffering.
After swallowing the allotted number of victims into the box, once the box is closed, it will never open until the victim dies.
The victims touched by the digestive fluid inside the box become ascetics linked to the Garden-Praiser.
Erase it.
Box-Seated Seeker
A power of the Nameless Garden-Praiser Sect appearing in Records of the Dark Seeker.
Rank: 6th Class under the Garden-Praiser Church.
According to the Garden-Praisers’ precepts, they cut off their own legs and, after repeated asceticism and meditation inside a box, attain power and become box-dwelling creatures that secrete digestive fluid.
They are Garden-Praisers who focus on the most primordial form of suffering.
After swallowing the allotted number of victims into the box, ̶o̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶o̶x̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶c̶l̶o̶s̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶u̶n̶t̶i̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶ ̶d̶i̶e̶s̶.̶
̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶u̶c̶h̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶g̶e̶s̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶f̶l̶u̶i̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶i̶d̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶o̶x̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶c̶e̶t̶i̶c̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶k̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶G̶a̶r̶d̶e̶n̶-̶P̶r̶a̶i̶s̶e̶r̶.̶
A scream.
The Seeker’s scream, the shock of a story being erased, the pleading, the sound of praying to the Nameless One, the agony of becoming a hymn of fanaticism completed through wretched truth and painful meditation—now helplessly losing its completeness, erased, becoming a shape that is imperfect and stripped of its mystery.
Could this pain, too, be the will of the Nameless One?
Did you intend my suffering?
If so, then accepting it would be righ...
I feel sick. No, stop sympathizing, don’t agree just because you’ve read it. But there’s no need to feel sick—soon I won’t even be able to sympathize. My head is collapsing, already collapsed, returning to something numb and unfeeling. No.
The bell! The bell is ringing. It must ring. The sound of the bell—Kim Sol-eum collapses, is restored. I have to endure. Instead of erasing one more thing—just one more, only as much as I can endure.
Overwriting.
Box-Seated Seeker
A kwon appearing in the Records of Exploring Darkness, belonging to the Mumyeongchanran Church.
Seoyeol is classified as a Rank 6 member of the Garden Quota Praisers.
In accordance with the law of the Garden Quota Praisers, they cut off their own legs, shut themselves inside a box, and, after enduring long periods of torment and meditation, attain kwon—transforming into a living creature inside the box that secretes digestive fluids.
They are Garden Quota Praisers who focus on the most primal form of suffering.
After capturing the number of victims assigned to them inside the box, the sealed box will sometimes burst open from a violent shock delivered from within.
I release my hand.
......
......
At last.
Following the newly rewritten content—
Unable to withstand the shock of being forcibly read, erased, and altered, the Box-Seated Seeker...
Pook.
...bursts from this “powerful shock from within.”
A crushing pressure.
And then—
The ascetic’s release.
Pook.
I feel myself, still sealed, being pushed out of the box.
With a strange noise, the Seeker melts away. The ghost story of the unopenable box, perfected by this Garden Quota Praiser through relentless suffering and meditation, collapses.
And mine does too.
The reason I had barely managed to recover, my identity as a human, my humanity, my emotions—
All mashed into pulp, leaving only traces behind.
Clink.
The sound of bells.
I can no longer hear it.
But I am not sad.
Nor am I tormented or in great pain.
That is because this is the proper attitude of a worker.
I must return to Baekilmong to receive a replacement for my damaged uniform.
—[Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and stand by. Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and stand by. Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and stand by....]
The guiding voice is heard.
The next moment—
I spill out of the box.
Along with two other figures.
Agent Cheongdong realizes, at some point, that the pain has disappeared.
Because pain beyond the threshold leaves behind a phantom ache, as if still there even after it is gone, the realization comes to him late.
He also realizes he can no longer hear the voices in his head.
Neither his own pain, nor the pain of others.
“......!”
He pushed against the mucous membrane of digestive fluid surrounding him—now stripped of the strange power it once held.
The dead Seeker’s membrane no longer exercised the unreasonable sealing authority, and so, with the membrane giving way beneath his pressure, he tore it open with a small pocketknife and was able to come outside.
Air.
The moment he inhaled—
He became aware of two other lumps of membrane beside him.
“...!”
He immediately drove his pocketknife into the one next to him.
After a desperate process of dismantling, what emerged was—
A man with the appearance of a handsome boy in a school uniform.
Someone he did not know.
Realizing this must be the cult member who had been swallowed by the box earlier, Cheongdong quickly moved his hand to the next membrane.
A larger mass this time.
Having regained a little more reason, his hands dismantled it with care. From within the hastily removed membrane emerged—
An employee in full black uniform, covered in countless horns, wearing a gas mask.
Agent Podo.
...or rather, what seemed to be a supernatural phenomenon of Agent Podo.
“...Agent Podo.”
But there was no response.
Had they lost consciousness?
It was hard to be sure since the gas mask remained on, but he guessed as much because the yellow lamplike glow of their eyes was no longer visible.
Cheongdong carefully lifted Agent Podo by the shoulder. Still, there was no reaction.
Only, from among the mass of horns on their head, something like a shattered piece of jade fell out. Cheongdong caught it and stored it away for now.
Anything else... worth doing?
It was hard to think clearly. Truthfully, his mind was still fogged.
...What was it I heard?
The voice of the Seeker that had endlessly whispered the pain of ascetics into his mind had, just before the end, said something strange...
Something bizarre and terrible, and yet concerning truth...
“Urgh.”
Agent Cheongdong frowned and pressed his brow.
It was never a good sign to listen too closely to the whispers of a supernatural calamity, or to dwell on their meaning.
...Contamination?
But right now, there was something more urgent to handle.
Agent Podo’s place of residence, and also...
...Agent Choi!
With a jolt like cold water pouring over him, he sprang to his feet.
Looking around properly at last, he saw the same space that had existed before being swallowed by the box.
The box, now open, its bloody hands hanging limply over the edge without a number carved in—
And...
No one.
In the desolate underground bunker, there was no trace of human presence.
Instead, the bunker’s door had been completely ripped away.
“......!”
And from outside came a tremendous roar.
But the agent recognized the familiar sound.
Bells.
This is...
The sound of a ritual guillotine coming down.
Agent Cheongdong grabbed Agent Podo and bolted outside.